Yet another way to consider these scenarios is as all emerging
simultaneously one nested within the other. The following figure shows
the scenarios nested with their associated organisational and energetic
scale. This suggests that the four organisational levels represented by
the scenarios from the household to the national will all be
transformed as global systems weaken and contract but none will fail
completely. In a sense this is implicit in each scenario in any case and
resolves the difficulty in imagining the Earth Steward and Lifeboat
scenarios with a complete absence of city and national level power
structures even if their functions and influence are very weak or
attenuated away from the centres of power.

In explaining this on the afore mentioned course in Mexico, I suggested that in the Earth Steward and Lifeboat
scenarios there could still be a government in Mexico city issuing
edicts, but that no one, outside the much reduced city, would hear or
take any notice. Like the reaction to my insurance example, my Mexican
students laughed and suggested that no one took any notice of the
government in Mexico now. This humorous response actually reflects an
ongoing process of fragmentation in Mexico where autonomous movements
in some regions and drug lords in others already rival the central and
state governments in the provision of security, extraction of taxes and
provision of services.

It is natural for national governments and large corporations to implement the systems that characterise the Brown Tech scenarioThe
other reason for considering that aspects of all scenarios will
simultaneously emerge in all regions is the structural commitment of
each level of governance to systems that can work at their respective
levels. It is natural for national governments and large corporations
to implement the systems that characterise the Brown Tech
scenario because these systems are commensurate with the organisational
scale in which they work. Similarly it is natural for city and
bioregional (state) governments to implement the somewhat more
distributed, diverse and smaller scale systems of the Green Tech
scenario. Middle sized business using regional resources and serving
regional markets will naturally work to reinforce this scenario.

Any planning for Lifeboats is mostly a private activity of people who lack total faith in the stability of our economy and society
Following this logic we can see smaller forms of organisation (small
business and local government) could manage many of the strategies
applicable to the Earth Steward scenario while the household or closed community is the natural level of organisation to contemplate the Lifeboat scenario. This nested hierarchy of scenarios explains why any planning for Lifeboats
is mostly a private activity of people who lack total faith in the
stability of our economy and society. Similarly many community
activists work towards strategies that level the playing field, develop
communitarian cultures and would be potent in an Earth Steward world, just as earnest middle level managers and planners work towards the Green Tech
world as the best progressive evolution from what we have. Many of the
elite “movers and shakers”, often from long established wealthy
families in affluent countries, who move between the upper levels of
corporations, governments and global governance organizations, believe
the Brown Tech world is the hard reality that must be worked with (although this can hardly be acknowledged publicly).63

Energy Descent Scenarios nested by scale of related system

I think this is one of the most insightful and empowering ways to think
about these scenarios because it helps us understand the apparent
contradictions between different perspectives and motivations of
different groups in society and even contradiction within our own
thoughts and behaviours. For example, it is common for people to have
private thoughts about the Lifeboats or perhaps Earth Steward futures,
while most of people’s public behaviour as workers and consumers
reinforce Brown Tech or perhaps Green Tech. The private thoughts are
often internally critiqued as anti-social or at least naïve, while the
public actions are often internally critiqued as driven by powerful
outside forces. This nested model can help us better integrate these
different aspects of ourselves.

The next section considers the assumptions of current mainstream sustainability efforts and their relevance within the four Energy Descent Scenarios.